Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to have sexual intercourse.

1632		R. Brome Covent-Garden Weeded I i: O Madge how I do long thy thing to ding didle ding.
1655		Gossips Braule 6: I was never down-diddl’d by a Barbers Boy.
c.1680		in Ebsworth Roxburghe Ballads [title] Diddle, Diddle, or the kind Country Lovers.
1784		Rambler’s Mag. Mar. 115/2: Pota potas, / I drink the lass / Who loves the pungo pinxi; / [...] / Smack smock, diddle daddle, masculinum gernus.
1836		‘Marrying A Maid’ in Frisky Vocalist 8: But leave me alone, I’m a precious old w----e, / And besides, I’ve been serv’d so, so often before, / That I now was resolv’d to be diddl’d no more!
c.1863		in T.P. Lowry Stories the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell (1994) 34: I will tell you how the boys do things. About a mile from camp lives a woman by the name of Scott, and she has two girls. One had been too near a trouser serpent and got bit. The other was brave and not afraid of snakes. Thursday some boys went over there. The old woman was sick. The oldest girl having a child, and while one of the boys diddled, the other boys shot all the chickens for Thanksgiving.
1890		in Randolph & Legman Ozark Folksongs and Folklore (1992) I 124: I put my hand upon her ass, [...] She says, let’s lay down on the grass / An’ diddle, diddle, diddle alla day.
1908		L.W. Payne Jr ‘Word-List From East Alabama’ in DN III:iv 304: diddle, v. [...] 2. To copulate.
1927		‘J.M. Hall’ Anecdota Americana I 145: The youth was diddling away with the ardor of puberty.
1934		H. Miller Tropic of Cancer (1963) 291: A whore is never too tired to open her legs. Some of them can fall asleep while you diddle them.
1943		in G. Legman Limerick (1953) 60: There was a young man with a fiddle / Who asked of his girl, ‘Do you diddle?’.
1953		J. Thompson Alcoholics (1993) 45: Next to diddling a woman patient, there wasn’t a surer way for a doctor to jam himself up than to play around with his nurse.
1959		‘Count Palmiro Vicarion’ Limericks 69: He could diddle a midge / Or the arch of a bridge.
1964		B. Jackson Get Your Ass in the Water (1974) 228: I used to could diddle all night long, / but since I got the age I am, / it takes me all night to diddle.
1970		E. Thompson Garden of Sand (1981) 500: ‘He was just seeing me home,’ the girl explained [...] ‘And practically diddlin you standing up on the front porch.’.
1978		L. Kramer Faggots 251: That dusky dinge I diddled discreetly with in Doubleday’s Non-Fiction.
1987		‘Joe Bob Briggs’ Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In 19: Any movie that starts off with a woman being diddled by a giant katydid can’t be all bad.
1999		Indep. Rev. 25 June 11: Imhotep [...] was caught diddling the Pharaoh’s mistress and sentenced to ‘a fate worse than death’.
2004		(con. 1960s-70s) T. Taylor Top Fellas 58/1: Diddling in the hay with other fellas’ fillies.
2009		(con. 1960s) J. Ellroy Blood’s a Rover 32: The Mau-Maus [...] diddled baboons and ate their own young.

2. (orig. US, also diddle-fuck) to masturbate oneself or another; thus diddling adj., n.

1902		D. St John Memoirs of Madge Buford 35: She plunged the candle deep into its [i.e. her vagina] depths and, with deft and rapid motion of her agile hand, diddled herself.
c.1915–20		in P. Smith Letter from My Father (1978) 76: For years I played with Lydia’s ‘mary’. We would go to the movies where we diddled one another.
c.1930		(ref. to late 19C) N. Kimball Amer. Madam (1981) 137: A man [...] who wasn’t a diddling schoolboy in for his first lay.
1941		in G. Legman Limerick (1953) 255: There was a young girl of Batonger, / Used to diddle herself with a conger.
1951		in G. Legman Limerick (1953) 185: There was a young girl of Topeka / Who from diddling grew weaker and weaker.
1959		‘Count Palmiro Vicarion’ Limericks 16: There was a young man from Montrose / Who could diddle himself with his toes.
1967		I. Rosenthal Sheeper 269: A curly-haired boy diddling himself.
1971		F. Hilaire Thanatos 201: To diddle a man, you got to use slip-ins.
1975		J. Roe The Same Old Grind 143: ‘Now grab your — [...] Keep doing that. Yes — diddle, diddle, diddle — ’.
1978		R. Price Ladies’ Man (1985) 126: With one hand she was diddling her clit.
1981		G.V. Higgins Rat on Fire (1982) 65: If I was you I would just go right back out that door and let her diddle heself in the powder room.
1988		‘Victoria Parker’ Incest Schoolgirls 🌐 Jamie hissed. Jilly slid down on the stall wall, her legs apart, her knees slightly bent, her pink panties a slash between her knees. She diddle-fucked her juicy pussy.

3. to molest sexually.

1941		in G. Legman Limerick (1953) 1: He lurked in the ditches / And diddled the bitches.
1958		C. Himes Real Cool Killers (1969) 8: Some white mother-raper up here [...] trying to diddle my little gals.
1965		Guild Dict. Homosexual Terms 11: diddle (v.): To fondle sexually without actually engaging in sexual intercourse.
1971		Winick & Kinsie Lively Commerce 27: Some of these fellows would like to diddle with my breasts all day.
1980		Maledicta IV:2 (Winter) 190: Diddler is [...] that which is used to diddle (= titillate) the diddley-pout = vagina.
1989		(con. 1968) W.E. Merritt Where the Rivers Ran Backward 242: I didn’t diddle around with the local stuff. [...] I’m as clean as a boiled rat.
2000		F. Kellerman Stalker (2001) 534: She had seen the best of fathers brought down for diddling their daughters.
2007		T. Dorsey Hurricane Punch 129: He diddled a cocker spaniel, for heaven’s sake.
2015		L. McInerney Glorious Heresies 37: [T]hey’d [i.e. men] all been diddled by priests.
2017		D. Winslow The Force [ebook] The fuck, they couldn’t sober up an Irish priest long enough to do a cop funeral? Or a PR who wasn’t too busy diddling a little boy?

4. (Aus.) to beat (lit. and fig.), to overcome.

1912

Sat. Referee (Sydney) 12 Oct. 4/6: The fact of having beaten an opponent can be described as [...] ‘diddled him,’ ‘tonked him,’ ‘settled him,’ ‘smote him,’ ‘sloshed him,’ [etc] .